2013-07-12

Knopflerfish moves to new major version - Knopflerfish 4 is released

We are happy to announce the availability of Knopflerfish 4, the next major release of Knopflerfish. KF4 is designed to be compliant with the OSGi R4 v4.3 specifications.

The new KF4 release support all core features, as well as all the the OSGi Services relevant
for the embedded and desktop markets. The KF4 overview page
presents a detailed overview of KF4 and OSGi R4 v4.3. A short
summary is presented below:

Generics - core API now uses generics

Capabilities - generic requirements and capabilities

Bundle Wiring API - provide information how requirements
and provided capabilities have been resolved by the
framework. Replaces PackageAdmin

Adapt pattern - new adapt method on the Bundle class

Framework hooks - mechanism to plug into the framework for
close interaction, Resolver Hooks, Bundle Hooks, Service
Hooks, Weaving Hooks.

Declarative Services updates.

Knopflerfish bundles, e.g. desktop, console commands etc,
are all update to use and reflect the new 4.3 APIs.

In addition to the upgrade to OSGi R4 v4.3 KF4 includes several
new Knopflerfish features and fixes:

The class weaving using ASM has been been moved into a separate
classpatcher bundle that implements a Weaving Hook.

General change to to all timer / timer functions to
System.nanoTime() instead of System.currentTimeMillis() to avoid
timer problems when correcting system clock.

The Android support has been extended with functions for building an Android .apk containing Knopflerfish.

The KF Directory Deployer bundle has been given an overhaul
and a new feature for deployment of XML-files with OSGi CM configurations
has been added.

Several new features in the CM-Desktop plug-in, in particular functions
for handling the CM Meta data XML document used by the Directory Deployer.

The Desktop bundle fully support the new Wiring-API as well
as several minor usability improvement.

The frameworkcommands bundle has been extended to support
the new Wiring API and has several new commands,
e.g. "wiring" and "capability".

Maven source and javadoc attachments for all Knopflerfish bundle artifacts are now generated.